Classic Tales of Mystery

By Editors of Canterbury Classics and Ken Mondschein

Eleven classic whodunits starring master sleuths such as Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, and Father Brown. 

A superstar lineup of detectives—including Sherlock Holmes, C. Auguste Dupin, and Hercule Poirot—headlines this elegant leather-bound edition of classic mystery stories. Short stories such as Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” and G. K. Chesterton’s “The Blue Cross” are ideal for a cozy evening by the fire, while novels like Agatha Christie’s The Murder on the Links and Jules Verne’s An Antarctic Mystery will keep you engrossed for days. The eleven works in this volume are preceded by a scholarly introduction that explores the origins of the genre, as well as the development of the modern mystery story and the contributions made by each author. 

Works Included
Short stories:
"The Murders in the Rue Morgue," Edgar Allan Poe
"The Adventure of the Creeping Man," Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
"The Blue Cross," G. K. Chesterton
"The Coin of Dionysius," Ernest Bramah
"The Anthropologist at Large," R. Austin Freeman
"The Most Dangerous Game," Richard Connell
Novels:
The Murder on the Links, Agatha Christie
Whose Body?, Dorothy Sayers
The Thirty-nine Steps, John Buchan
An Antarctic Mystery, Jules Verne
Room 13, Edgar Wallace

• Language: English
• Publisher: Canterbury Classics
• Release date: Sep 21, 2021
• ISBN: 9781645178941

Editors of Canterbury Classics

Canterbury Classics is an imprint of Printers Row Publishing Group, a wholly owned subsidiary of Readerlink Distribution Services, LLC, the largest full-service book distributor to non-trade booksellers in North America. Canterbury Classics publishes classic works of literature in fresh, modern formats. From elegant leather-bound editions to whimsical pop-up books to the best-selling Word Cloud Classics series and more, our extensive collection is sure to captivate and inspire readers and brighten bookshelves.

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INTRODUCTION

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The perfect detective story cannot be written. The type of mind which can evolve the perfect problem is not the type of mind that can produce the artistic job of writing.

Raymond Chandler

Notes on the Detective Story

Despite Chandler’s pessimism about the perfect detective story, the tales in his book come as close to being perfect exemplars of the mystery story as any can be—besides being great works of literature in their own right. Back in the fourth century BCE, Aristotle set forth in his Poetics a formula for Greek tragic drama that has been a mainstay of literary art ever since: There is some serious matter that has upset the balance of the world; an element of discovery; and the cleansing, or setting matters right. This denouement has some element of tragedy and downfall, but always brings release, or catharsis, to the audience. In the classic mystery story, we find all of the elements set out by Aristotle: it has a serious matter—the crime—which is discovered and ultimately cleansed, bringing the downfall of the perpetrator and, in the process, catharsis. Thus, in contrast to Chandler’s opinions, this volume shows that the mystery story can indeed be high art.

Likewise, much as Greek theater began as religious rites performed during the worship of Dionysus, the almost ritualistic nature of the mystery story is encoded in the name of the genre itself. The English word mystery dates from the Middle Ages. Deriving from the Latin mysterium, it originally meant craft or secret, or, in religious contexts, something whose significance is not immediately understandable. Thus, a guild (an association of artisans for mutual support and to regulate competition in the market) might have been called a mystery, the skills and techniques of its members unintelligible to the uninitiated, while elements of Christian belief, such as the Trinity, might also be mysteries. (Uniting the two meanings, guilds often put on religious dramas known as mystery plays.) From these come our definition of a mystery as something unexplained. But this tension also implies an inevitable resolution: that the unknown can be made known, producing enlightenment.

CHARACTERISTICS OF THE MYSTERY STORY

A mystery story is, at its most fundamental level, a story of order restored through the power of explanation. A crime has been committed—usually, but not always, that most flagrant violation of the social contract, murder—and the world must be set aright. Enter the detective, the central figure of the mystery story. If the mystery story is viewed as a craft-guild or other community of practice, then the detective is the master who trains the apprentices; if it is a religious ritual, then they are the priest who leads the service. The detective is both the reader’s surrogate and a memorable character with their own peculiar quirks. They may be male or female, young or old, professional or amateur. However, all detectives have one thing in common: a keen and penetrating intelligence, superior to the minds of the other characters (if not that of the reader). The detective is the only person able to analyze the clues inevitably left behind by the criminal, to reject the obvious conclusion, and to thus discover the true perpetrator. The innocent are vindicated and the guilty taken away to their (off-stage) punishment. Thus, the scales of the plot, and of justice, are balanced, and catharsis is granted the reader.

Assisting the detective is the inevitable sidekick. This estimable personage plays the part of the detective’s foil and Socratic interlocutor. As the Catholic priest and detective-story writer Ronald Knox put down in his rules of the genre in 1929, The ‘sidekick’ of the detective, the Watson, must not conceal from the reader any thoughts which pass through his mind: his intelligence must be slightly, but very slightly, below that of the average reader. Through the interactions of the detective and their sidekick, background information is given, and the points of the case are revealed.

There are a few more typical elements to the mystery story. One is a memorable setting—sometimes interesting and exotic, sometimes urban and dangerous, sometimes (as in the cozy mystery) familiar and domestic. It is an unstated rule that this may also be a closed community—people gathered together in a remote country home, or on a train, as in Murder on the Orient Express—which helps to limit the possibilities for the perpetrator’s identity and keeps the cast of characters from getting out of hand. The perpetrator, moreover, cannot be an unexplained sinister foreigner or stranger: they must be present since the beginning of the story.

There is also, of course, the element of suspense: there must be stakes (such as an innocent risking being wrongly punished, if not an actual threat to the life of the detective or a loved one), and it must seem as if the worst might happen. Heightening the suspense is the element of misdirection: the solution to the crime is never the obvious one. It is often helpful in this if the elements of police-work and detection are plausible and backed up by real-world facts and methods; this helps give the mystery story (which is, in the end, fantastic wish-fulfillment) the veneer of verisimilitude. No supernatural causes or madeup, fantastic devices such as exotic poisons, previously unknown identical twins, or excessive numbers of secret passages should be used. Similarly, the detective should arrive at their conclusions based on detective-work, not luck or a deus ex machina, and must declare the clues when they find them.

GENESIS OF THE MYSTERY STORY

The mystery story is usually considered to be a product of modernity, born, at least for Anglophones, when Edgar Allen Poe published The Murders in the Rue Morgue in 1841. However, elements go back much earlier: what are the Judgment of Solomon from the Bible, or Oedipus Rex, if not mysteries of a sort? Gong’an fiction is often referred to as Chinese detective fiction, and The Three Apples from One Thousand and One Nights is a similar sort of predecessor. Likewise, many medieval stories, including several tales from the Decameron and Canterbury Tales, have mystery-like elements, as do Voltaire’s 1747 novel Zadig and E. T. A. Hoffman’s 1819 novel Mademoiselle de Scudéri.

To be sure, though, the modern mystery story would have been unthinkable before the nineteenth century. In the premodern village, everyone knew everyone else and it was hard for malefactors to remain anonymous. Growing urbanization in the modern era led to the anonymity of the city, and thus the possibility of a crime going undetected became real. To maintain order in these new cities, the first professional police forces were formed with administrators who took a scientific view towards crime and its punishment. The Enlightenment, the growth of scientific thought in the West, brought with it faith in the power of reason. All truths are knowable, if we only are able to ask the right questions. Thus, the invention of the detective whose job it is to uncover the perpetrators of crime and bring their misdoings to light in order to be purged by the criminal justice system. The fact that the mystery-story detective is usually not a police officer corresponds to real history: the first detective, a former Parisian criminal-turned-police informant named Eugène-François Vidocq, who founded his Office of Information in 1833, was a private eye. The first police detective unit, meanwhile, was only just founded in Boston in 1846.

That being said, the mystery has endless subgenres. Hard-boiled detective stories are set in a gritty, corrupt world; feature professional detectives with antiheroic features (often working outside the proper legal and police systems, which cannot be trusted); and sometimes have explicit violence and a strong sexual element. This is contrasted with the soft-boiled or cozy mystery, feature a domestic setting, an intimate community, an amateur (often female) detective (who the police regard as an annoying busybody), restrained language, personal motivations for the crime, such as jealousy or a longstanding grudge, and no explicit sex or violence. However, the cozy mystery’s detective can only exist in contrast to, and as an antidote to, the professional detective and the alienation and violence of the city. Historical mysteries combine the mystery genre with the historical, such as Ellis Peters’s series about Brother Cadfael, the mystery-solving crusader-turned-monk, or Umberto Eco’s Name of the Rose. Supernatural mysteries, such as Jim Butcher’s series about the crime-solving wizard Harry Dresden, use magic and/or horror themes in place of the principles of scientific detection—but they must still always operate according to the consistent rules of the world they have established. The police procedural has professional law enforcement as its protagonist. The mystery may even be comical, as famously embodied Peter Sellers’ bumbling Inspector Clouseau, or intended for children, such as Donald J. Sobol’s Encyclopedia Brown series. The line between the mystery and the spy thriller is often thin indeed, save that the spy story usually includes elements of the adventure story and political thriller.

The stories in this book are the primordial examples of the mystery tale, written, for the most part, in the Golden Age of Detective Fiction—the 1920s and 1930s—with a few nineteenth-century predecessors thrown in for good measure. This golden age took place in the context of the rise of well-paying, widely distributed pulp magazines and the growth of a reading public. It was ended by the shortages of World War II and, after that, by the rise of television. The stories tend to observe the typical rules noted above. In this, they represent the mystery story in its most classic form.

ABOUT THE WRITERS AND STORIES

Our collection begins with what is often considered the first real detective story in the English language, Edgar Allan Poe’s The Murders in the Rue Morgue. Poe is associated with many genres. He was born in Boston in 1809; his double-barreled surname comes from the fact that, after his mother’s death of tuberculosis and his father’s abandonment of the family, he was raised in Richmond, Virginia, and the United Kingdom by a wealthy merchant couple, John and Frances Allan. Poe was lucky in another circumstance: His birth coincided with the beginning of the era when the industrialized printing press meant that a writer could begin to make a living solely from their literary output (albeit not easily), and the widespread distribution of his work meant that he was influential not just in the genesis of the mystery story, but also in the nascent genres of science fiction and horror. After purposely getting kicked out of West Point (he had earlier dropped out of the University of Virginia), he began a career in publishing that was marked by heavy drinking and erratic behavior. His poem The Raven, which may have been inspired by his young wife Virginia’s imminent death due to tuberculosis, was an instant classic when he published it in 1845. (Virginia would die in 1847.) Poe himself died a broken man in 1849, the cause of death variously attributed to alcoholism, heart disease, meningitis, syphilis, violence, and suicide.

Poe’s The Murders in the Rue Morgue, the ancestor of all of the Golden Age detective stories, was first published in Graham’s Magazine in 1841. His protagonist, C. Auguste Dupin, is credited with being the forerunner of such characters as Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot and Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes. Dupin also appeared in two subsequent stories, The Mystery of Marie Rogët and The Purloined Letter. The version reproduced here is Poe’s revised version from his twelve-story collection Tales, published by Wiley & Putnam in 1845—though he would continue to write further edits in his own personal copy until his death. (Now known as the J. Lorimer Graham copy, it is housed at the University of Texas at Austin.) Typographical errors have been corrected, though errors in French have been retained to reflect Poe’s understanding of the language.

The name of Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie, Lady Mallowan, or as she is known to the reading public: Agatha Christie (1890–1976), is almost synonymous with the mystery story. Born Agatha Miller to a wealthy family in Devon, England, she was the youngest of three children. Young Agatha was educated at home, in Paris, and in Egypt. On Christmas Eve of 1914, several months after the outbreak of World War I, she married her fiancé, Archibald (Archie) Christie, an officer in the Royal Air Corps. Agatha Christie herself contributed to the war effort as a volunteer nurse, and then as a paid pharmacist’s assistant.

Though she had been experimenting with writing since the age of 18, Christie’s first publication was The Mysterious Affair at Styles, written in 1916 and published, after several rejections, in 1920. It was also the first book to feature her most famous creation: a Belgian policeman named Hercule Poirot, who found himself in England after being displaced by the German invasion of his home country. The bald little man with the waxed mustachios would appear in 47 novels and short story collections penned by Christie. Her detective was so popular and beloved that Poirot’s death in Curtain (written in the early 1940s but only published in 1975) was reported on the front page of the New York Times. The Murder on the Links, published in 1923, is the second Poirot story and Christie’s third overall novel. It is the author at her best: Poirot solves a murder in the north of France, while his companion Arthur Hastings has a romantic subplot.

Though Archie and Agatha Christie lived a privileged life of wealth and international travel, two personal tragedies struck in 1926: her mother died in April, and in August, Archie, who had been having an affair, asked her for a divorce. This set up the most mysterious episode in Agatha Christie’s life: her own disappearance. In early December of 1926, she vanished from her home. Her abandoned car was discovered the next day with her clothes and driver’s license inside. After an extensive manhunt and widespread media attention, she was discovered registered under a false name at a spa in Yorkshire, apparently having traveled there in a dissociative state—though at the time, the press saw it as a publicity stunt. The Christies divorced the following year, though Agatha retained custody of their daughter, Rosalind, and kept writing under her married surname.

Dorothy L. Sayers (1893–1957), in addition to being a writer of mystery stories, was a poet, translator, and—like her friends J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis—a writer on theological subjects. Born to a middle-class family in Oxford, UK, she moved in literary circles and was one of the first women awarded a degree—an MA, in fact—by Oxford University. Though Sayers published Whose Body? to great acclaim in 1923, she continued working until 1931 in London as a copywriter at the advertising firm S. H. Benson, where she penned a number of famous jingles and slogans. In 1926 Sayers married Oswald Atherton Mac Fleming, the divorced father of two daughters who was twelve years her senior. They had no children. Owing to complications from his World War I service, Mac Fleming gradually became an invalid and died, aged 68, in 1950. Sayers herself died of a coronary thrombosis seven years later, aged 64, whereupon it was revealed that her nephew John Anthony Fleming, called Tony, was in fact her illegitimate son and heir, born of an affair she had with a married man before meeting her husband.

Sayers summed up the plot of Whose Body? thusly: My detective story begins brightly, with a fat lady found dead in her bath with nothing on but her pince-nez. Now why did she wear pince-nez in her bath? If you can guess, you will be in a position to lay hands upon the murderer, but he’s a very cool and cunning fellow… Her almost-too-perfect, multitalented Lord Peter Wimsey would feature in eleven bestselling novels and two short story collections, but Sayers would personally consider her translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy to be her best work. Like other Oxfordians of her generation, there is something of a nostalgia for the classically educated past—and a disdain for the crudity of post–World War I mass culture—in Sayers’s writing, but at the same time she brings a knowing worldliness that was beyond the dons of the Inklings circle.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930) was, of course, the creator of the most famous fictional detective of all time, Sherlock Holmes. Born in Edinburgh, Scotland, Doyle grew up poor but received an excellent education. He trained as a medical doctor but failed in his chosen specialty of ophthalmology. However, in his writing, he found a great deal of success. Holmes first appeared in A Study in Scarlet in 1886, and stories of the detective were much in demand—though Doyle was ambivalent about his creation and even tried to kill him off in 1893’s The Final Problem. Nonetheless, Holmes was resurrected in 1901’s Hound of the Baskervilles and eventually appeared in a total of 56 short stories and four novels. The Adventure of the Creeping Man was first published in 1923 in The Strand magazine in the UK and Hearst’s International in the US. It veers toward science-fiction in its resolution—another interest of Doyle’s, as seen in works such as his The Lost World—but nonetheless is classic Holmes.

Besides having his fictional detective set wrongs aright, Doyle had a keen sense of social justice in his own life, writing about the abuses the Belgians committed in the Congo and championing those wrongly accused by the justice system—particularly people of color. Though raised Catholic, he had drifted away from the Church and toward Spiritualism, and was a famous proponent of seances and of establishing contact with the dead.

G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) trained as an illustrator at University College London but found his fame in writing. He was, like Dorothy L. Sayers, exceedingly interested in theology (in his case, Catholicism) and, like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, interested in social justice. Also, like Sayers, he moved in literary circles, associating with T. S. Elliot, George Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, and Bertrand Russell. He was incredibly prolific, penning 80 books, hundreds of poems and short stories, thousands of essays, and a number of plays, as well as being an early pioneer in radio. At his requiem mass in 1936—a large man, he died of congestive heart failure at the age of only 62—his friend Ronald Knox said of him, All of this generation has grown up under Chesterton’s influence so completely that we do not even know when we are thinking Chesterton.

Chesterton’s interests in religion and justice came together in his most famous literary creation, Father Brown, who, beginning with The Blue Cross in 1910, appeared in 50 short stories published in the author’s lifetime. Brown’s twist, as it were, is that he is a Roman Catholic priest who uses his knowledge of human nature to solve crimes. In The Blue Cross, for instance, he uses a variety of ingenious tricks—in addition to his knowledge of theology—to deceive the criminal master of disguise Flambeau and thwart the theft of a valuable work of art.

Ernest Bramah’s detective Max Carrados, like the most memorable fictional detectives, has a distinctive quality: he is blind due to a riding accident. However, his other senses are, stereotypically, sharpened as a result. The Coin of Dionysius, published as The Master Coiner Unmasked in 1913, is the first story in which we are introduced to the independently wealthy Carrados and his Watson, the detective Mr. Carlyle. The plot hinges on the forgery of an ancient coin; Carrados cracks the case without leaving his study—though he would go further afield in subsequent adventures.

Bramah (1868–1942) was an intensely private man who was a failure at both school and farming, though, supported by his wealthy father, he persisted in a career in publishing and in trying to sell his fiction. It was not until 1900 that he sold his first book about the comical adventures of the itinerant storyteller Kai Lung. The Kai Lung stories are today criticized for their baroque and stereotypical depiction of Chinese society, though their style would become widely influential. Altogether, he would write 21 books and many short stories, working in the science-fiction and supernatural genres as well as in mystery. More than two dozen Carrados stories were republished in five collections and one stand-alone novel, The Bravo of London.

R. Austin Freeman (1862–1943) was, like his creation Dr. John Evelyn Thorndyke, a medical doctor. He had a successful career but was forced to give up his practice in 1904 owing to complications of the malaria he had contracted while serving in British West Africa. His conservative political views are apparent in his work: Criminals are a sort of genetically defective underclass and must be wiped out for the good of civilization. (These views were widespread at the time and gave rise to the eugenics movement.) Similarly, he was a strong believer in racial predispositions and stereotypes. Freeman kept writing until his death, despite the London Blitz of World War II and his progressing Parkinson’s disease.

The Anthropologist at Large is one of the 40 short stories and 21 novels featuring Thorndyke, beginning with The Red Thumb Mark in 1907. Freeman is remarkable both for his early depiction of what would be called forensics and for being widely credited as the inventor of the inverted mystery story where the perpetrator is known at the beginning of the story and the detective shows how their identity was established. (Peter Falk’s Columbo is perhaps the most widely known example of the genre.) Despite Freeman’s painstaking attempts at accuracy, his efforts often led him to the realm of the speculative. The Red Thumb Mark, for instance, features the counterfeiting of fingerprints well before this was proven possible. The Anthropologist at Large is an early Thorndyke story and notable not just for its disagreeable antisemitism and anti-Japanese stereotypes, but by the way in which the protagonist definitively deduces the identity of the criminal from a hat in a manner most superior to Sherlock Holmes in a similar case.

John Buchan (1875–1940) was many things in his career: a historian, a politician, and the 15th Governor-General of Canada. His love of the Scottish Borders is evident in many of his works, as is his service in the foreign ministry and the Intelligence Service. He published The Thirty-Nine Steps in 1915; it marked the point of departure where the spy thriller (particularly the man on the run type) leaves the mystery story proper. Set just before the outbreak of World War I, Buchan’s all-purpose man of action, Richard Hannay, must keep Britain’s war plans safe from a ring of German spies. It was later adapted, much changed, into a movie by Alfred Hitchcock.

The Frenchman Jules Verne (1828–1905) needs little introduction: He is, of course, the author of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Journey to the Center of the Earth, and Around the World in Eighty Days. After Agatha Christie, he is the world’s second-most-translated author. In addition to tales of adventure and science fiction, his travel writing, and his popular-science writing, he was also a practitioner of the mystery story. The Antarctic Mystery (originally Le Sphinx des glaces, The Sphinx of the Ice) is a continuation of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. It is an adventure tale grounded in natural phenomena as much as a mystery, and stands in a line of weird fiction about the Antarctic that connects Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner to H. P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness.

Richard Connell’s The Most Dangerous Game is similarly less a mystery than an adventure story and a tale of suspense. Published in Collier’s in 1924, it turns the American fad for big-game hunting (popularized, in part, by former president Teddy Roosevelt) on its head by making the hunter into the hunted. It was made into a successful 1932 film and is widely read in high school curricula. Connell (1893–1949) was a World War I veteran, journalist, and screenwriter who published more than 300 short stories. He died of a heart attack in his home in Beverly Hills, aged only 56.

Edgar Wallace (1875–1932) was born out of a brief out-of-wedlock encounter his mother had while touring as an actress; he grew up in poverty, and left school at the age of 12. With little else to do, he enlisted in the British army, where, inspired by Rudyard Kipling, he began writing. His big break, as it were, came during the Boer War when he became a war correspondent, which led to a career as a reporter for the Daily Mail—which he was fired from in 1907 because of inaccurate reporting that put the paper at legal risk. Fiction rapidly became a way of paying the bills; also, like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Wallace reported on the atrocities committed in the Congo. He achieved notable success in the early 1920s and became known as the king of thrillers. He could pump out work at a rapid rate by recording his tales and having them transcribed by secretaries. Room 13 (1924) is the first story featuring J. G. Reeder, a mild-mannered civil servant who solves mysteries. In this case, Reeder plants an accomplice in prison to solve a case of forgery. It has been adapted to films several times.

After an unsuccessful run for Parliament, Wallace moved to Hollywood to write movies for RKO, where he perhaps made his most lasting contribution to popular culture—the initial script for King Kong. Unfortunately, Wallace never saw the success of his creation: He died of complications from undiagnosed diabetes in 1932.

INFLUENCE

The influence of the mystery story has been far-reaching, providing no shortage of material for television, movies, live theatre, and even boardgames (such as Clue). It is endlessly adaptable to our times: The urbane gentlemen of the Golden Age gave way to the hard-boiled detectives of 1940s noir, the lawand-order upholding police procedurals of classic TV series such as Columbo, Kojak, or Hawaii Five-O, and quirky private eyes such as Monk, Castle, and Angela Lansbury’s Jessica Fletcher of Murder, She Wrote. (The running joke is that Jessica Fletcher was always the real killer—wherever she went, someone was murdered.)

It even affects the real-world legal system: Juries often want to see things tied up neatly, as in Perry Mason or CSI. Real life, alas, is never as cut-and-dried. The mystery story is clever escapism—albeit escapism of the type that shows us some deep truths about human nature.

Ken Mondschein

Northampton, MA

December 2020

The Murders

in the Rue Morgue

Edgar Allen Poe

What song the Syrens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among women, although puzzling questions, are not beyond all conjecture.

—Sir Thomas Browne

The mental features discoursed of as the analytical, are, in themselves, but little susceptible of analysis. We appreciate them only in their effects. We know of them, among other things, that they are always to their possessor, when inordinately possessed, a source of the liveliest enjoyment. As the strong man exults in his physical ability, delighting in such exercises as call his muscles into action, so glories the analyst in that moral activity which disentangles. He derives pleasure from even the most trivial occupations bringing his talent into play. He is fond of enigmas, of conundrums, of hieroglyphics; exhibiting in his solutions of each a degree of acumen which appears to the ordinary apprehension preternatural. His results, brought about by the very soul and essence of method, have, in truth, the whole air of intuition.

The faculty of resolution is possibly much invigorated by mathematical study, and especially by that highest branch of it which, unjustly, and merely on account of its retrograde operations, has been called, as if par excellence, analysis. Yet to calculate is not in itself to analyze. A chess-player, for example, does the one without effort at the other. It follows that the game of chess, in its effects upon mental character, is greatly misunderstood. I am not now writing a treatise, but simply prefacing a somewhat peculiar narrative by observations very much at random; I will, therefore, take occasion to assert that the higher powers of the reflective intellect are more decidedly and more usefully tasked by the unostentatious game of draughts than by all the elaborate frivolity of chess. In this latter, where the pieces have different and bizarre motions, with various and variable values, what is only complex is mistaken (a not unusual error) for what is profound. The attention is here called powerfully into play. If it flag for an instant, an oversight is committed resulting in injury or defeat. The possible moves being not only manifold but involute, the chances of such oversights are multiplied; and in nine cases out of ten it is the more concentrative rather than the more acute player who conquers. In draughts, on the contrary, where the moves are unique and have but little variation, the probabilities of inadvertence are diminished, and the mere attention being left comparatively unemployed, what advantages are obtained by either party are obtained by superior acumen. To be less abstract—Let us suppose a game of draughts where the pieces are reduced to four kings, and where, of course, no oversight is to be expected. It is obvious that here the victory can be decided (the players being at all equal) only by some recherché movement, the result of some strong exertion of the intellect. Deprived of ordinary resources, the analyst throws himself into the spirit of his opponent, identifies himself therewith, and not unfrequently sees thus, at a glance, the sole methods (sometime indeed absurdly simple ones) by which he may seduce into error or hurry into miscalculation.

Whist has long been noted for its influence upon what is termed the calculating power; and men of the highest order of intellect have been known to take an apparently unaccountable delight in it, while eschewing chess as frivolous. Beyond doubt there is nothing of a similar nature so greatly tasking the faculty of analysis. The best chess-player in Christendom may be little more than the best player of chess; but proficiency in whist implies capacity for success in all those more important undertakings where mind struggles with mind. When I say proficiency, I mean that perfection in the game which includes a comprehension of all the sources whence legitimate advantage may be derived. These are not only manifold but multiform, and lie frequently among recesses of thought altogether inaccessible to the ordinary understanding. To observe attentively is to remember distinctly; and, so far, the concentrative chess-player will do very well at whist; while the rules of Hoyle (themselves based upon the mere mechanism of the game) are sufficiently and generally comprehensible. Thus to have a retentive memory, and to proceed by the book, are points commonly regarded as the sum total of good playing. But it is in matters beyond the limits of mere rule that the skill of the analyst is evinced. He makes, in silence, a host of observations and inferences. So, perhaps, do his companions; and the difference in the extent of the information obtained, lies not so much in the validity of the inference as in the quality of the observation. The necessary knowledge is that of what to observe. Our player confines himself not at all; nor, because the game is the object, does he reject deductions from things external to the game. He examines the countenance of his partner, comparing it carefully with that of each of his opponents. He considers the mode of assorting the cards in each hand; often counting trump by trump, and honor by honor, through the glances bestowed by their holders upon each. He notes every variation of face as the play progresses, gathering a fund of thought from the differences in the expression of certainty, of surprise, of triumph, or of chagrin. From the manner of gathering up a trick he judges whether the person taking it can make another in the suit. He recognises what is played through feint, by the air with which it is thrown upon the table. A casual or inadvertent word; the accidental dropping or turning of a card, with the accompanying anxiety or carelessness in regard to its concealment; the counting of the tricks, with the order of their arrangement; embarrassment, hesitation, eagerness or trepidation—all afford, to his apparently intuitive perception, indications of the true state of affairs. The first two or three rounds having been played, he is in full possession of the contents of each hand, and thenceforward puts down his cards with as absolute a precision of purpose as if the rest of the party had turned outward the faces of their own.

The analytical power should not be confounded with simple ingenuity; for while the analyst is necessarily ingenious, the ingenious man is often remarkably incapable of analysis. The constructive or combining power, by which ingenuity is usually manifested, and to which the phrenologists (I believe erroneously) have assigned a separate organ, supposing it a primitive faculty, has been so frequently seen in those whose intellect bordered otherwise upon idiocy, as to have attracted general observation among writers on morals. Between ingenuity and the analytic ability there exists a difference far greater, indeed, than that between the fancy and the imagination, but of a character very strictly analogous. It will be found, in fact, that the ingenious are always fanciful, and the truly imaginative never otherwise than analytic.

The narrative which follows will appear to the reader somewhat in the light of a commentary upon the propositions just advanced.

Residing in Paris during the spring and part of the summer of 18—, I there became acquainted with a Monsieur C. Auguste Dupin. This young gentleman was of an excellent—indeed of an illustrious family, but, by a variety of untoward events, had been reduced to such poverty that the energy of his character succumbed beneath it, and he ceased to bestir himself in the world, or to care for the retrieval of his fortunes. By courtesy of his creditors, there still remained in his possession a small remnant of his patrimony; and, upon the income arising from this, he managed, by means of a rigorous economy, to procure the necessaries of life, without troubling himself about its superfluities. Books, indeed, were his sole luxuries, and in Paris these are easily obtained.

Our first meeting was at an obscure library in the Rue Montmartre, where the accident of our both being in search of the same very rare and very remarkable volume, brought us into closer communion. We saw each other again and again. I was deeply interested in the little family history which he detailed to me with all that candor which a Frenchman indulges whenever mere self is his theme. I was astonished, too, at the vast extent of his reading; and, above all, I felt my soul enkindled within me by the wild fervor, and the vivid freshness of his imagination. Seeking in Paris the objects I then sought, I felt that the society of such a man would be to me a treasure beyond price; and this feeling I frankly confided to him. It was at length arranged that we should live together during my stay in the city; and as my worldly circumstances were somewhat less embarrassed than his own, I was permitted to be at the expense of renting, and furnishing in a style which suited the rather fantastic gloom of our common temper, a time-eaten and grotesque mansion, long deserted through superstitions into which we did not inquire, and tottering to its fall in a retired and desolate portion of the Faubourg St. Germain.

Had the routine of our life at this place been known to the world, we should have been regarded as madmen—although, perhaps, as madmen of a harmless nature. Our seclusion was perfect. We admitted no visitors. Indeed the locality of our retirement had been carefully kept a secret from my own former associates; and it had been many years since Dupin had ceased to know or be known in Paris. We existed within ourselves alone.

It was a freak of fancy in my friend (for what else shall I call it?) to be enamored of the night for her own sake; and into this bizarrerie, as into all his others, I quietly fell; giving myself up to his wild whims with a perfect abandon. The sable divinity would not herself dwell with us always; but we could counterfeit her presence. At the first dawn of the morning we closed all the messy shutters of our old building; lighting a couple of tapers which, strongly perfumed, threw out only the ghastliest and feeblest of rays. By the aid of these we then busied our souls in dreams—reading, writing, or conversing, until warned by the clock of the advent of the true Darkness. Then we sallied forth into the streets arm in arm, continuing the topics of the day, or roaming far and wide until a late hour, seeking, amid the wild lights and shadows of the populous city, that infinity of mental excitement which quiet observation can afford.

At such times I could not help remarking and admiring (although from his rich ideality I had been prepared to expect it) a peculiar analytic ability in Dupin. He seemed, too, to take an eager delight in its exercise—if not exactly in its display—and did not hesitate to confess the pleasure thus derived. He boasted to me, with a low chuckling laugh, that most men, in respect to himself, wore windows in their bosoms, and was wont to follow up such assertions by direct and very startling proofs of his intimate knowledge of my own. His manner at these moments was frigid and abstract; his eyes were vacant in expression; while his voice, usually a rich tenor, rose into a treble which would have sounded petulantly but for the deliberateness and entire distinctness of the enunciation. Observing him in these moods, I often dwelt meditatively upon the old philosophy of the Bi-Part Soul, and amused myself with the fancy of a double Dupin—the creative and the resolvent.

Let it not be supposed, from what I have just said, that I am detailing any mystery, or penning any romance. What I have described in the Frenchman, was merely the result of an excited, or perhaps of a diseased intelligence. But of the character of his remarks at the periods in question an example will best convey the idea.

We were strolling one night down a long dirty street in the vicinity of the Palais Royal. Being both, apparently, occupied with thought, neither of us had spoken a syllable for fifteen minutes at least. All at once Dupin broke forth with these words:

"He is a very little fellow, that’s true, and would do better for the Théâtre des Variétés."

There can be no doubt of that, I replied unwittingly, and not at first observing (so much had I been absorbed in reflection) the extraordinary manner in which the speaker had chimed in with my meditations. In an instant afterward I recollected myself, and my astonishment was profound.

Dupin, said I, gravely, this is beyond my comprehension. I do not hesitate to say that I am amazed, and can scarcely credit my senses. How was it possible you should know I was thinking of——? Here I paused, to ascertain beyond a doubt whether he really knew of whom I thought.

——of Chantilly, said he, why do you pause? You were remarking to yourself that his diminutive figure unfitted him for tragedy.

This was precisely what had formed the subject of my reflections. Chantilly was a quondam cobbler of the Rue St. Denis, who, becoming stage-mad, had attempted the rôle of Xerxes, in Crébillon’s tragedy so called, and been notoriously Pasquinaded for his pains.

Tell me, for Heaven’s sake, I exclaimed, the method—if method there is—by which you have been enabled to fathom my soul in this matter. In fact I was even more startled than I would have been willing to express.

It was the fruiterer, replied my friend, "who brought you to the conclusion that the mender of soles was not of sufficient height for Xerxes et id genus omne."

The fruiterer!—you astonish me—I know no fruiterer whomsoever.

The man who ran up against you as we entered the street—it may have been fifteen minutes ago.

I now remembered that, in fact, a fruiterer, carrying upon his head a large basket of apples, had nearly thrown me down, by accident, as we passed from the Rue C——into the thoroughfare where we stood; but what this had to do with Chantilly I could not possibly understand.

There was not a particle of charlâtanerie about Dupin. I will explain, he said, "and that you may comprehend all clearly, we will first retrace the course of your meditations, from the moment in which I spoke to you until that of the rencontre with the fruiterer in question. The larger links of the chain run thus—Chantilly, Orion, Dr. Nichols, Epicurus, Stereotomy, the street stones, the fruiterer."

There are few persons who have not, at some period of their lives, amused themselves in retracing the steps by which particular conclusions of their own minds have been attained. The occupation is often full of interest and he who attempts it for the first time is astonished by the apparently illimitable distance and incoherence between the starting-point and the goal. What, then, must have been my amazement when I heard the Frenchman speak what he had just spoken, and when I could not help acknowledging that he had spoken the truth. He continued:

"We had been talking of horses, if I remember aright, just before leaving the Rue C——. This was the last subject we discussed. As we crossed into this street, a fruiterer, with a large basket upon his head, brushing quickly past us, thrust you upon a pile of paving stones collected at a spot where the causeway is undergoing repair. You stepped upon one of the loose fragments, slipped, slightly strained your ankle, appeared vexed or sulky, muttered a few words, turned to look at the pile, and then proceeded in silence. I was not particularly attentive to what you did; but observation has become with me, of late, a species of necessity.

"You kept your eyes upon the ground—glancing, with a petulant expression, at the holes and ruts in the pavement, (so that I saw you were still thinking of the stones,) until we reached the little alley called Lamartine, which has been paved, by way of experiment, with the overlapping and riveted blocks. Here your countenance brightened up, and, perceiving your lips move, I could not doubt that you murmured the word ‘stereotomy,’ a term very affectedly applied to this species of pavement. I knew that you could not say to yourself ‘stereotomy’ without being brought to think of atomies, and thus of the theories of Epicurus; and since, when we discussed this subject not very long ago, I mentioned to you how singularly, yet with how little notice, the vague guesses of that noble Greek had met with confirmation in the late nebular cosmogony, I felt that you could not avoid casting your eyes upward to the great nebula in Orion, and I certainly expected that you would do so. You did look up; and I was now assured that I had correctly followed your steps. But in that bitter tirade upon Chantilly, which appeared in yesterday’s Musée, the satirist, making some disgraceful allusions to the cobbler’s change of name upon assuming the buskin, quoted a Latin line about which we have often conversed. I mean the line

Perdidit antiquum litera sonum.

"I had told you that this was in reference to Orion, formerly written Urion; and, from certain pungencies connected with this explanation, I was aware that you could not have forgotten it. It was clear, therefore, that you would not fail to combine the two ideas of Orion and Chantilly. That you did combine them I saw by the character of the smile which passed over your lips. You thought of the poor cobbler’s immolation. So far, you had been stooping in your gait; but now I saw you draw yourself up to your full height. I was then sure that you reflected upon the diminutive figure of Chantilly. At this point I interrupted your meditations to remark that as, in fact, he was a very little fellow—that Chantilly—he would do better at the Théâtre des Variétés."

Not long after this, we were looking over an evening edition of the Gazette des Tribunaux, when the following paragraphs arrested our attention.

"EXTRAORDINARY MURDERS.—This morning, about three o’clock, the inhabitants of the Quartier St. Roch were aroused from sleep by a succession of terrific shrieks, issuing, apparently, from the fourth story of a house in the Rue Morgue, known to be in the sole occupancy of one Madame L’Espanaye, and her daughter Mademoiselle Camille L’Espanaye. After some delay, occasioned by a fruitless attempt to procure admission in the usual manner, the gateway was broken in with a crowbar, and eight or ten of the neighbors entered accompanied by two gendarmes. By this time the cries had ceased; but, as the party rushed up the first flight of stairs, two or more rough voices, in angry contention, were distinguished and seemed to proceed from the upper part of the house. As the second landing was reached, these sounds, also, had ceased and everything remained perfectly quiet. The party spread themselves and hurried from room to room. Upon arriving at a large back chamber in the fourth story (the door of which, being found locked, with the key inside, was forced open), a spectacle presented itself which struck every one present not less with horror than with astonishment.

"The apartment was in the wildest disorder—the furniture broken and thrown about in all directions. There was only one bedstead; and from this the bed had been removed, and thrown into the middle of the floor. On a chair lay a razor, besmeared with blood. On the hearth were two or three long and thick tresses of grey human hair, also dabbled in blood, and seeming to have been pulled out by the roots. Upon the floor were found four Napoleons, an earring of topaz, three large silver spoons, three smaller of métal d’Alger, and two bags, containing nearly four thousand francs in gold. The drawers of a bureau, which stood in one corner were open, and had been, apparently, rifled, although many articles still remained in them. A small iron safe was discovered under the bed (not under the bedstead). It was open, with the key still in the door. It had no contents beyond a few old letters, and other papers of little consequence.

"Of Madame L’Espanaye no traces were here seen; but an unusual quantity of soot being observed in the fire-place, a search was made in the chimney, and (horrible to relate!) the corpse of the daughter, head downward, was dragged therefrom; it having been thus forced up the narrow aperture for a considerable distance. The body was quite warm. Upon examining it, many excoriations were perceived, no doubt occasioned by the violence with which it had been thrust up and disengaged. Upon the face were many severe scratches, and, upon the throat, dark bruises, and deep indentations of finger nails, as if the deceased had been throttled to death.

"After a thorough investigation of every portion of the house, without farther discovery, the party made its way into a small paved yard in the rear of the building, where lay the corpse of the old lady, with her throat so entirely cut that, upon an attempt to raise her, the head fell off. The body, as well as the head, was fearfully mutilated—the former so much so as scarcely to retain any semblance of humanity.

To this horrible mystery there is not as yet, we believe, the slightest clew.

The next day’s paper had these additional particulars.

"The Tragedy in the Rue Morgue. Many individuals have been examined in relation to this most extraordinary and frightful affair. [The word ‘affaire’ has not yet, in France, that levity of import which it conveys with us,] "but nothing whatever has transpired to throw light upon it. We give below all the material testimony elicited.

"Pauline Dubourg, laundress, deposes that she has known both the deceased for three years, having washed for them during that period. The old lady and her daughter seemed on good terms—very affectionate towards each other. They were excellent pay. Could not speak in regard to their mode or means of living. Believed that Madame L. told fortunes for a living. Was reputed to have money put by. Never met any persons in the house when she called for the clothes or took them home. Was sure that they had no servant in employ. There appeared to be no furniture in any part of the building except in the fourth story.

"Pierre Moreau, tobacconist, deposes that he has been in the habit of selling small quantities of tobacco and snuff to Madame L’Espanaye for nearly four years. Was born in the neighborhood, and has always resided there. The deceased and her daughter had occupied the house in which the corpses were found, for more than six years. It was formerly occupied by a jeweller, who under-let the upper rooms to various persons. The house was the property of Madame L. She became dissatisfied with the abuse of the premises by her tenant, and moved into them herself, refusing to let any portion. The old lady was childish. Witness had seen the daughter some five or six times during the six years. The two lived an exceedingly retired life—were reputed to have money. Had heard it said among the neighbors that Madame L. told fortunes—did not believe it. Had never seen any person enter the door except the old lady and her daughter, a porter once or twice, and a physician some eight or ten times.

"Many other persons, neighbors, gave evidence to the same effect. No one was spoken of as frequenting the house. It was not known whether there were any living connexions of Madame L. and her daughter. The shutters of the front windows were seldom opened. Those in the rear were always closed, with the exception of the large back room, fourth story. The house was a good house—not very old.

"Isidore Musèt, gendarme, deposes that he was called to the house about three o’clock in the morning, and found some twenty or thirty persons at the gateway, endeavoring to gain admittance. Forced it open, at length, with a bayonet—not with a crowbar. Had but little difficulty in getting it open, on account of its being a double or folding gate, and bolted neither at bottom not top. The shrieks were continued until the gate was forced—and then suddenly ceased. They seemed to be screams of some person (or persons) in great agony—were loud and drawn out, not short and quick. Witness led the way up stairs. Upon reaching the first landing, heard two voices in loud and angry contention—the one a gruff voice, the other much shriller—a very strange voice. Could distinguish some words of the former, which was that of a Frenchman. Was positive that it was not a woman’s voice. Could distinguish the words ‘sacré’ and ‘diable.’ The shrill voice was that of a foreigner. Could not be sure whether it was the voice of a man or of a woman. Could not make out what was said, but believed the language to be Spanish. The state of the room and of the bodies was described by this witness as we described them yesterday.

"Henri Duval, a neighbor, and by trade a silver-smith, deposes that he was one of the party who first entered the house. Corroborates the testimony of Musèt in general. As soon as they forced an entrance, they reclosed the door, to keep out the crowd, which collected very fast, notwithstanding the lateness of the hour. The shrill voice, this witness thinks, was that of an Italian. Was certain it was not French. Could not be sure that it was a man’s voice. It might have been a woman’s. Was not acquainted with the Italian language. Could not distinguish the words, but was convinced by the intonation that the speaker was an Italian. Knew Madame L. and her daughter. Had conversed with both frequently. Was sure that the shrill voice was not that of either of the deceased.

"—Odenheimer, restaurateur. This witness volunteered his testimony. Not speaking French, was examined through an interpreter. Is a native of Amsterdam. Was passing the house at the time of the shrieks. They lasted for several minutes—probably ten. They were long and loud—very awful and distressing. Was one of those who entered the building. Corroborated the previous evidence in every respect but one. Was sure that the shrill voice was that of a man—of a Frenchman. Could not distinguish the words uttered. They were loud and quick—unequal—spoken apparently in fear as well as in anger. The voice was harsh—not so much shrill as harsh. Could not call it a shrill voice. The gruff voice said repeatedly ‘sacré,’ ‘diable,’ and once ‘mon Dieu.’

"Jules Mignaud, banker, of the firm of Mignaud et Fils, Rue Deloraine. Is the elder Mignaud. Madame L’Espanaye had some property. Had opened an account with his banking house in the spring of the year—(eight years previously). Made frequent deposits in small sums. Had checked for nothing until the third day before her death, when she took out in person the sum of 4,000 francs. This sum was paid in gold, and a clerk went home with the money.

"Adolphe Le Bon, clerk to Mignaud et Fils, deposes that on the day in question, about noon, he accompanied Madame L’Espanaye to her residence with the 4,000 francs, put up in two bags. Upon the door being opened, Mademoiselle L. appeared and took from his hands one of the bags, while the old lady relieved him of the other. He then bowed and departed. Did not see any person in the street at the time. It is a bye-street—very lonely.

"William Bird, tailor, deposes that he was one of the party who entered the house. Is an Englishman. Has lived in Paris two years. Was one of the first to ascend the stairs. Heard the voices in contention. The gruff voice was that of a Frenchman. Could make out several words, but cannot now remember all. Heard distinctly ‘sacré’ and ‘mon Dieu.’ There was a sound at the moment as if of several persons struggling—a scraping and scuffling sound. The shrill voice was very loud—louder than the gruff one. Is sure that it was not the voice of an Englishman. Appeared to be that of a German. Might have been a woman’s voice. Does not understand German.

"Four of the above-named witnesses, being recalled, deposed that the door of the chamber in which was found the body of Mademoiselle L. was locked on the inside when the party reached it. Every thing was perfectly silent—no groans or noises of any kind. Upon forcing the door no person was seen. The windows, both of the back and front room, were down and firmly fastened from within. A door between the two rooms was closed, but not locked. The door leading from the front room into the passage was locked, with the key on the inside. A small room in the front of the house, on the fourth story, at the head of the passage was open, the door being ajar. This room was crowded with old beds, boxes, and so forth. These were carefully removed and searched. There was not an inch of any portion of the house which was not carefully searched. Sweeps were sent up and down the chimneys. The house was a four story one, with garrets (mansardes). A trap-door on the roof was nailed down very securely—did not appear to have been opened for years. The time elapsing between the hearing of the voices in contention and the breaking open of the room door, was variously stated by the witnesses. Some made it as short as three minutes—some as long as five. The door was opened with difficulty.

"Alfonzo Garcio, undertaker, deposes that he resides in the Rue Morgue. Is a native of Spain. Was one of the party who entered the house. Did not proceed up stairs. Is nervous, and was apprehensive of the consequences of agitation. Heard the voices in contention. The gruff voice was that of a Frenchman. Could not distinguish what was said. The shrill voice was that of an Englishman—is sure of this. Does not understand the English language, but judges by the intonation.

"Alberto Montani, confectioner, deposes that he was among the first to ascend the stairs. Heard the voices in question. The gruff voice was that of a Frenchman. Distinguished several words. The speaker appeared to be expostulating. Could not make out the words of the shrill voice. Spoke quick and unevenly. Thinks it the voice of a Russian. Corroborates the general testimony. Is an Italian. Never conversed with a native of Russia.

"Several witnesses, recalled, here testified that the chimneys of all the rooms on the fourth story were too narrow to admit the passage of a human being. By ‘sweeps’ were meant cylindrical sweeping brushes, such as are employed by those who clean chimneys. These brushes were passed up and down every flue in the house. There is no back passage by which any one could have descended while the party proceeded up stairs. The body of Mademoiselle L’Espanaye was so firmly wedged in the chimney that it could not be got down until four or five of the party united their strength.

"Paul Dumas, physician, deposes that he was called to view the bodies about day-break. They were both then lying on the sacking of the bedstead in the chamber where Mademoiselle L. was found. The corpse of the young lady was much bruised and excoriated. The fact that it had been thrust up the chimney would sufficiently account for these appearances. The throat was greatly chafed. There were several deep scratches just below the chin, together with a series of livid spots which were evidently the impression of fingers. The face was fearfully discoloured, and the eye-balls protruded. The tongue had been partially bitten through. A large bruise was discovered upon the pit of the stomach, produced, apparently, by the pressure of a knee. In the opinion of M. Dumas, Mademoiselle L’Espanaye had been throttled to death by some person or persons unknown. The corpse of the mother was horribly mutilated. All the bones of the right leg and arm were more or less shattered. The left tibia much splintered, as well as all the ribs of the left side. Whole body dreadfully bruised and discoloured. It was not possible to say how the injuries had been inflicted. A heavy club of wood, or a broad bar of iron—a chair—any large, heavy, and obtuse weapon would have produced such results, if wielded by the hands of a very powerful man. No woman could have inflicted the blows with any weapon. The head of the deceased, when seen by witness, was entirely separated from the body, and was also greatly shattered. The throat had evidently been cut with some very sharp instrument—probably with a razor.

"Alexandre Etienne, surgeon, was called with M. Dumas to view the bodies. Corroborated the testimony, and the opinions of M. Dumas.

"Nothing farther of importance was elicited, although several other persons were examined. A murder so mysterious, and so perplexing in all its particulars,